Moorcock, Art & Comics PART I

Simon Perrins joins me in Derry and Toms to discuss Moorcock, art, comics, Tolkien, TV adaptations, role-playing games, tortured poet musicians we adored in our youths and generally go totally fugazi.

Simon is the man behind our banner art, logo, Gerard Arthur Connelly portraits and pretty much our entire visual identity. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.

Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.

Imagery and stuff we discuss along the way:

White Dwarf #57

Thrud and Eric of Boneymaloney – Carl Critchlow

Fighting Fantasy Book 9 – Caverns of the Snow Witch

Imagine Magazine January 1985 – Cover by Rodney Matthews

The Nomad of Time – Grafton Edition – Cover by Melvyn

The Tolkien Bestiary – David Day – Illustration of The Fall of Numenor by Ian Miller

More Tolkien Bestiary – elves by Victor Ambrus

Andy’s Fave Elric cover – Jack Gaughan

Barry Windsor-Smith’s Elric vs Conan

Simon’s fave Elric – Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Michael Whelan

Elric by Lawrence Cutting

Blue Steel

Science Fantasy #47

Stormbringer 2e by GW – Rob Halford Elric

James Cawthorn’s Stormbringer by Jayde Design

Death of Elric prelim sketch by Cawthorn

Cawthorn’s History of the Runestaff

P Craig Russell on The Dreaming City

Julien Tello on The Dreaming City for the Julian Blondel adaptations

Mike Mignola’s Corum

MM on The Beatles

Moorcock and Mike Harrison (Robert Crumb style)

Homemade MERP Screens

The Swords of Heaven the Flowers of Hell by Howard Chaykin

The Mad God’s Amulet by Bob Haberfield

Swords of Corum by Mark Salwowski

The Chronicles of Castle Brass by Mark Salwowski

Breakfast in the Ruins – Random House – artist unknown

Fantasy Masterworks History of the Runestaff by Richard Carr

Fugazi by Mark Wilkinson

Moorcock and RPGs Part V – Stormbringer Redux!

Moorcock & RPGs V – Stormbringer Redux!

Ted AKA @tedankhamen joins me in Derry and Toms for the second leaf of our Summer diptych musing on Moorcock, gaming and whatever else enters our eyeline.

Some choice cuts in here including miniature bashing, Tolkien (again), a shock Strongbow appreciation story, chaosium-isms… but mostly some good, chewy thinking on modelling Moorcockian worlds and cosmology. I also bang my BoL drum again.

Be sure to have a good delve around Ted’s blog Tomb of Tedankhamen.

Ted also mentioned Lasers and Feelings by John Harper. Lots more good stuff on his itch.io

You can check out the Tentacled Whisperer of Secrets Discord by making an offering to… THE TENTACLED WHISPERER… or just check out his profile. He’s pretty lax on gatekeeping for an ancient deity of unspeakable power.

Steve’s Stormbringer game recaps are on his blog.

Check out and subscribe to Jim Kirkland’s newsletter and read his spoiler-free review of The Citadel of Forgotten Myths.

Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store. Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.

Moorcock and RPGs Part Four – Sandboxing the Multiverse

We’re back in Derry and Toms to talk gaming again, this time with CLARKY THE CRUEL.

Dave gets shocked by the crap number of TV channels we had in the UK as kids, Clarky tells us about his sandboxing adventures beyond the ultraworld, and I get inspired. And we digress. Obviously.

You can find Clarky’s Dissecting Worlds podcast archive and all of his game logs on his blog (including entries by yours truly describing the action from the perspective of post-apocalypse fiction powerhouse Roy Saveloy).

Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.

Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.

We also mention Jason’s podcast, the Nerd’s RPG Variety Cast.

Check out Miles’s new venture, the Casual Trek Podcast.

The Fortress of the Pearl – Part One

The Fortress of the Pearl – Gollancz SF 1989

The Fortress of the Pearl – Part One

Loz returns to Derry & Toms to revisit an old adversary, Michael Moorcock’s The Fortress of the Pearl.

Join us and marvel at our declining energy.

Bridle, as Loz declares The Chronicle of the Black Sword a shit book and denigrates poetry.

Along the way we ‘wake the chicken’. What does that even mean? How many names are there for trousers? Why would anyone smoke stout?

Listen as we mull over the answers.

(Spoiler – we don’t know)

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Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.

Chapter 11 of The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly was scored by N Λ N D

Moorcock and RPGs Part Three – A Deep Fix?

In the third and final part of our Moorcockian RPG triptych Rob (aka OldShabbyGamer), host of the Confessions of a Wee Tim’rous Bushi podcast, joins me at Derry & Toms to talk Moorcock, D&D, when a beer is not a beer, and Tolkien!

Graham, Neil and Norman also drop by to talk Stormbringer 3e, ploons, shit sailors & what would make our own ideal Moorcockian RPG. It’s a really Deep Fix. No prizes for guessing who provides the soundtrack!

Breakfast in the Ruins is hosted on Podbean and available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Owltail, Podparadise, TuneIn, Overcast, Amazon Music and most other podcast clients. If we’re not on your favourite let us know and we’ll sort it.

Check out our Patreon for exclusive updates and content.

Our podcast art is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter.

Moorcock and RPGs Part Two – STORMHACK!

We’re back in Derry and Toms and returning to Moorcock’s influence and presence in RPGs in the company of Ralph Lovegrove, host of the Fictoplasm Podcast and designer of STORMHACK!

We talk Moorcock (obviously), gaming, podcasting and other bits n bobs, as well as Ralph’s own take on the Moorcockian role-playing game… STORMHACK!

We also mention Appendix N and other recommended reading lasts from RPGs such as RuneQuest.

Check out our Patreon for exclusive updates and content.

Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.

Moorcock RPGs and the Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly

Moorcock RPGs and the Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly

Phil, Loz and I celebrate an all too brief interlude in lockdown life to drink weird porters and muse upon Moorcock’s treatment at the hands of tabletop role-playing games.

Phil taunts us with her syrupy beer avoidance skills, two-man canoes get far too many mentions and Loz gatekeeps Moorcock RPG play (the rotter).

Also, The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly debuts with chapter one. There are 5 more to come (and if I don’t get pelted with rottent tomatoes I may write more).

Episode 06 – Elric of Melniboné Part Two w/ @lozbearfield

Elric of Melniboné Part Two

Loz is back with me at Derry and Tom’s as we dive into Straasha’s ocean depths to prize open the mysteries below and discuss (most of) Book Two of Elric of Melniboné. Elric is full of pith and vinegar for a change and we get a good look at him from a different perspective.

Excellent beverages are consumed along the way.

Bored, cold, so… YouTube Channel?

Frost is laying over the Bradford hills like a crisp, armoured shiver blanket so I thought balls to it… I’ll knock out another video version of a podcast episode (lazily put together this time on the native Windows video maker with a slideshow and audio). I’ve done this, as much as anything else, just to see how the process works. It also makes a change from uploading short videos of Lindsey in Predicaments.

So many predicaments…

On balance I probably prefer the Lindsey clips. Somehow I need to figure out a way of combining the two. Anyway, here’s the YouTube version of Episode 01…

Perhaps we’ll do a video episode at some point…

Episode 03 – Elric of Melniboné Part one

Elric of Melniboné Part one

Loz is back with me at Derry and Tom’s as we tackle the 1972 novel Elric of Melniboné.

We have a few drinks and muse upon Elric’s early pre-wanderer, Stormbringerless years on the Ruby Throne of Imrryr.

We also ponder the news of a possible Elric TV show and attempt to get comfortable on Lord Shark’s Ostentatious Couch (spoiler, we don’t).